


The Rest Is Silence

by LillyRose



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Dark Stand, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, Loss, Morally Ambiguous Character, Sacrifice, Strand POV, mental manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillyRose/pseuds/LillyRose
Summary: "Saving the world was incidental."





	The Rest Is Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [poseidon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/poseidon/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Poseidon! 
> 
> Thanks to my beta, Meerkatnip.

_"You knew what you had to do."_  
_"Yes._ "  
_"And how did you know that, exactly?"_

 

Two weeks before he met Alex Reagan, he received her picture via private courier. 

In the picture, she sat alone at a table in a sidewalk cafe. The picture was shot at a distance, with its subject obviously unaware that her picture was being taken. Even taken at a distance and at a bad angle, the image conveyed an inquisitiveness that was impossible to miss. The way she held her body spoke of an alert watchfulness, as if she studied the world around her to find the answers to her unspoken questions. A yellow coffee cup halfway to her mouth almost covered her questioning smile. 

Neatly written across the bottom of the photograph were three words: return her calls. His eyes were drawn back to the young woman's smile. This was Alex Reagan, the woman whose calls he’d avoided eight times. The woman he had no choice but to call back... sooner rather than later. 

She was, quite possibly, younger than his daughter.

Contrary emotions twisted low in his gut. Through years of practice, he quickly separated them and pushed the unwanted ones aside. Those had no place in the current situation. He shut them away in a desk drawer alongside the young woman's smile.

 

_"After receiving the picture, how long before you contacted Alexandra Reagan?"_  
_"Two weeks_."  
_"Why wait so long?"_  
_"I had... preparations... to make."_  
_"We'll come back to that. How long did you work with her?”_  
_"The first time? Several months."_  
_"How did your working relationship with Miss Reagan end?"_

 

He didn’t lie to Alex. 

Instead, he gave her a small piece of the truth. Her investigation into The Black Tapes had become too personal for comfort. A private man, he resented having his personal life laid bare for the public's amusement. 

Beneath that small truth laid the larger, more complicated truth. He had underestimated Alex Reagan's… dedication... to a project. He hadn’t been prepared for the speed and the accuracy with which she made the proper connections between the Black Tapes. He took a few days to carefully consider the proper course of action. The best plan, he decided, was to play on her emotions. In specific he needed to play on her temper, a delicate operation. He needed to make her angry enough to slow down her investigation, but not so angry that she gave up on The Black Tapes completely. 

(Or on him.) 

With that plan in mind, he picked a fight with Alex. His genuine disgust over her continuous invasions of his privacy gave the fight a sense of authenticity. It was almost too real for him. To Alex, the fight was very real. He witnessed the hurt their fight caused her. But he knew, after months of silence from her end, that the strategy worked.

The strategy worked. Until it didn’t.

 

_"The two of you resumed your working relationship."_  
_"Yes."_  
_"And how did that go?"_  
_"It was... difficult. At the beginning."_  
_“So why try?”_  
_“I had no choice but to try.”_

 

Two weeks before he reinstated contact with Alex Reagan, he received an email with her name in the subject line. The body of the e-mail was blank. A file was attached. He clicked on the file and a picture popped up: Alex Reagan.

At the slight distance between him and his laptop, she didn't look well. He leaned into the monitor to take a closer look at the picture. Up close, it became evident that Alex was nothing close to well. From her ragged appearance, she barely slept at night. (If she slept at all) Her bloodshot eyes were ringed by dark circles. A bone deep fatigue showed in the slump of her shoulders. Her hands clutched at a white coffee mug, as if it and its contents were the only things keeping her in the here and now.

He leaned back in his chair. His eyes settled on a spot on the blank, white wall of his hotel room. He stared, lost in contradictory thoughts.

He'd been called pragmatic; others, less kind, called him calculating. Cold. He preferred to think of himself as a logical man. If presented with a sensible explanation with its basis in reason, solid evidence, and established fact, then he accepted and was satisfied with that explanation.  
The evidence was undeniable. It seemed he'd allowed himself to become _attached_ to Alex Reagan.

On the logical level, he understood the need for an emotional attachment to Alex Reagan. He had to feel something for her to guarantee the greater plan's success. On an emotional level, he felt deeply upset at seeing Alex Reagan in obvious mental and emotional pain. However, it seemed he'd allowed himself to become more attached to her than necessary. 

That could be a problem.

He looked back at the picture. That was when he noticed the words photoshopped into the right margins of the picture.  
_**Remember our deal and take care of her.**_

 

_"She let you back into her life. No questions asked."_  
_"Alex had plenty of questions. I had...ways...of avoiding answering those questions."_  
_"Almost like a dance."_  
_"If you insist."_  
_"Tell me what happened when the music stopped. That's funny to you?"_  
_"Not funny. Ironic.”_  
_"Tell me how it ended."_

 

Four days after Coralee's direct intervention in his life, she left a picture on his office desk. 

For the first time, Alex wasn't alone in the picture. He sat across from her, the two of them seated at small table crammed into an even smaller studio booth at Pacific Northwest Stories. A mug of coffee, a cup of tea, and a veritable ocean of old, decaying paperwork laid on the table between them. From the expression on his face, the photograph had captured him mid obvious explanation. Alex looked prepared to argue her point, the fierceness mixed with exasperated affection on her face. 

It was too much. 

He closed his eyes in automatic self-defense, taking a moment to sort one emotion out from another. There was resentment over the photographer's implied message. No matter where he went, they would always be able to find him. He felt violated by an unknown and unwelcome witness to a private moment in his life. Beneath the other emotions, panic simmered. Whomever took the photograph knew about his attachment to Alex. They knew the exact moment to take a photo that made a late-night research session look like something more... intimate... than it was.

He flipped the picture over, looking for the actual written message... On the glossy back, written out in Coralee’s compulsively neat handwriting, was a black block of text. A part of his mind recognized the quotation being from one of Coralee’s favorite playwrights.  
_**"Heav'n has no rage like love to hatred turn'd/Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."**_

 

_"You were in love with Alex Reagan."_  
_"That's immaterial."_ _"Right. You didn't kill Alex. Your wife killed her."_  
_"Yes."_

 

One day before the apocalypse, a picture was taped to the door of his father's house. 

Alex and him at her favorite sidewalk cafe. Their table was the farthest from the curb, the furthest from other people. The shadows of the cafe awning obscured their faces. The photographer didn't need to see their faces; their body language told the story. The two of them sat side by side at the table, their bodies touching easily, with forgotten cups at their elbows. He remembered the brief feeling of peace, the feeling of her warm and now completely familiar against his skin.

Scrawled across the bottom were the words, _I’m looking forward to this._

He resisted the angry impulse to rip the photo off the door. He could easily tear it into pieces and throw those pieces in the trash. Instead, he carefully took the picture down. With equal care, he folded the picture in two and put it in the breast pocket of his jacket. Years ago, he would have kept the photograph out of a fear of its being used against him. At that moment, he might have admitted to saving the photo for personal reasons. As with his first half-truth to Alex, the truth hid somewhere between reason and emotion. 

Only now they hung in near perfect balance. 

 

_"Why?"_  
_"I've already told you. Twice."_  
_"Well, you know what they say, the third time's the charm. Why did Alex Reagan have to die?"_

 

The end of Alex Reagan’s life began with a hand-delivered letter. 

As with all his covert communications with Coralee, the letter was encoded. The book required to break the code was not an easy book to find. It took him over a month to acquire the necessary book and use it to translate Coralee’s message. 

The letter read, _**I found the lost line. In 1993, the last male descendant of Charles Guiteau had his last name changed. He took his wife's last name of Reagan. He's too old for our purposes now, but he does have a daughter. The lost Oneida bloodline flows in her veins. She would be an acceptable substitution for Charlie. Be prepared.**_

A feeling of relief was his first reaction. He would not have to experience the pain of a parent losing their only child. That pain would belong to another man, to the father of an unknown woman named Reagan. A man who would never know how and why his child had died.  
As a father, that idea didn’t sit well with him. A rebellious thought broke free from the others and took root in his mind. He wrote back to Coralee, asking her for the Reagan woman’s whole name and her parents’ address.

 

_"Again... why?"_  
_"Coralee and myself did what we had to do to save the life of our daughter."_  
_"And the world."_  
_"Saving the world was incidental."_

 

After her death, Alex Reagan’s picture was in a local morning paper. 

By doctor’s orders, he was denied access to all forms of media. Someone went through some trouble to sneak the newspaper into his room. Two suspects immediately came to his mind: Coralee and Detective Lewin. He hadn't heard from Coralee – or her handlers – since the day of the averted apocalypse. Lewin's involvement was the more likely explanation. The detective must have decided to apply emotional pressure to his suspect. An attempt to elicit answers more to his own satisfaction, regarding the death of Alex Reagan. 

He looked at Alex’s picture, a small grey photo above two columns of black and white text. This was her obituary.

He tossed the paper on the floor. He didn't need to read about Alex from the perspectives of her parents, Nic Silver, Amalia Chenkova, or other people he'd never met. He knew Alex, in ways that no one else ever would. He knew her cleverness, her bravery, and her loyalty, even at the end of all things. That knowledge was enough for him. Alex Reagan was complete in his mind, forever. 

An idea occurred to him. It was unlikely that Coralee smuggled the newspaper into his cell but it was not impossible. Being that he was still a thorough man, he picked up the paper and searched the remaining pages for a message from his wife. He found her last message written in the side margins of the birth announcement pages. 

_**Charlie is safe.**_

The paper slipped from his fingers. He laid back on his bed and closed his eyes. 

The preservation of offspring was a biological imperative operating above a parent’s sense of self-preservation. A parent’s love was an unstoppable force of nature, the one emotion he could not overcome with his formidable will. He never stood a chance against their combined powers. His failure of control didn't matter – all that mattered was Charlie's safety. His daughter would spend the rest of her life believing that her father committed multiple murders. But she would have a long and natural life in which to do so. 

Charlie was safe. Alex's death had guaranteed his daughter’s safety. 

Her death did not guarantee that Charlie's parents would live. Spilling Alex’s blood prevented the physical end of the world. The darkness invoked to end the world would not be easily contained. Those who could stop it would have a mess to clean up. He felt confident they would succeed, but not before more blood was spilled. 

Including his. And Coralee’s. 

He didn't need to open his eyes to see them. At the edges of his consciousness, the shadows were already gathering, lengthening and darkening in the corners of his room He knew they were there, and he knew what they wanted.

He wondered if after it happened, if the soul existed and moved on to another place, if he would find Alex there.

 

- _fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Coralee's quote comes from William Congreve's _The Mourning Bride_.


End file.
